Virginia Satir: biography of this pioneer of family therapy.

One of the most important psychologists in history as the driving force behind family therapy.

Virginia Satir (1916-1988) is recognized as one of the pioneer psychologists in family therapy. one of the pioneer psychologists in family therapy.. Her theory has had an important impact on psychotherapy with a systemic approach, and also on the humanistic tradition of clinical psychology.

The following is a biography of Virginia Satir a biography of Virginia Satiras well as some of her main contributions to clinical intervention with a family approach.

Brief biography of Virginia Satir

Virginia Satir was born on June 26, 1916 in the city of Neillsville in Wisconsin, United States. She is remembered as a self-taught woman, who even learned to read and write with her own she even learned to read and write with her own didactic resources from a very young age.. She grew up in a Catholic and scientific family and was the eldest sister of five children.

In 1929, when she was 13 years old, the family moved to the city of Milwaukee, so that Virginia could start school. The same year the Great Depression began, so at a very young age Virginia began working while continuing her studies. Once this was over, she began her college education at the University of Milwaukee, she began her college education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, formerly known as Milwaukee Teachers College.formerly known as Milwaukee State Teachers College.

In the meantime, he worked for the Works Projects Administration (WPA), a program created to compensate for the consequences of the Great Depression in the United States, which mostly employed adult males in poverty. By the second half of the 1930s, the WPA was also employing women and young people on public projects. Virginia also worked for a time as a nanny. Eventually she specialized in education and, as a professional and, as a professional, she worked as an educator.

In the summer of 1937 Virginia took courses at Northwestern University in Chicago, which she continued for a couple of summers. She then studied in the department of social services administration at the University of Chicago, where she completed her graduate studies in 1948. Finally, she trained as a social worker, a profession she practiced from 1951 until the beginnings of her own therapeutic model.

Beginnings and influences of family therapy

Once she finished her studies, Virginia Satir began to work in private practice, and by 1955, she was already working at the Illinois Psychiatric Institute. Among her main claims, Satir advocated for the need to analyze not only the individual, but also to carry out in-depth analyses of family dynamics..

He thought that the studies of psychology at the individual level were essential, however, they could not stop there, since this did not offer the necessary explanations and neither did it offer sufficient alternatives. For Satir, it was important to look at the first system that sustains the individual, and this was the family.

In other words, Virginia Satir argued that the "obvious problem" (the one verbalized in therapy or that which was easily observable) was almost never the real problem; it was only a "presentation". That is, it was a superficial conflict that had been generated by the individual's and the family's own interaction with the underlying problem.

From there, he proposed to carry out particular analyses (which would consider the case of each subject according to his family environment), and not general ones (which would explain the experience of a subject based on the coincidences he had with other subjects far from his context). All of this introduced important novelties in the area of clinical and educational psychology, which finally laid the foundations for the development of a new approach in the field of psychology.The result was a new model of intervention or family therapy.

As a result, in the late 1950s, Satir and other well-known American psychotherapists founded a research institute on mental functioning, called the Mental Research Institute.

The headquarters was in the city of Palo Alto, California, and it quickly established itself as one of the most recognized institutions in psychological care at the family level. Among other things, it was from the interventions and research conducted at the Mental Research Institute that the foundations of the systemic tradition in family psychotherapy were consolidated. the foundations of the systemic tradition in family psychotherapy were consolidated..

Satir's humanistic perspective

For Virginia Satir, the main objective of psychotherapeutic intervention was to achieve personal growth, that is, to allow the human being to become a complete being. And for this, it was necessary to look at the "microcosm" that the nuclear family represented.

In this, the maternal figure, the paternal figure and the son or daughter had to build a process of human validation together. a process of human validation togetherwhich was subsequently reflected in the approach of each person to the rest of society.

This translates into the constant establishment of interpersonal connections, because once the networks among family members are consolidated, they are extrapolated to other members of society. Thus, "healing" family networks, could generate better people and better ties on a large scale..

The personal growth model

Virginia Satir's theory was eventually consolidated into a personal growth model, which had important implications for psychotherapy. This model pursued mainly the following objectives:

• To increase self-esteem.
• To enhance decision making.
• To assume personal responsibilities..
• To achieve self-congruence.

Outstanding works

Some of the main works of Virginia Satir are Self-Esteem from 2001; In Intimate Contactfrom 1976; Changing with Relativesfrom 1976; and All Your Facesfrom 1978, among many others. In the same way received several awards from different universities and psychotherapy associations around the world. around the world.